“Time is precious. Life is precious.”

“When you were born you had a clock over your head slowly ticking down”

Do you wish there were 48 hours in a day instead of just 24? For me, there never seems to be enough time to get everything done that I want. Since we just have about 16 hours a day (not counting sleep time), it’s therefore important how we use the time we have.

Over the years I’ve wasted my time on:

• Pursuing a relationship with a would be lover who never wanted to get serious

• Working for myself and throwing money at a job that wasn’t going to go anywhere

• Trying to please lots of people from family to friends at my own expense emotionally

• Planning building my dream life and taking my eye off my everyday one

• Buying gadgets and nice clothes, attending social events, and taking trips just to impress others

• Investing in family members who just aren’t interested in me

• Living in a location I no longer enjoy and complain about it rather than ever investigate anywhere else

On the average, people waste about 2 hours a day. This is mainly from poor planning. If a person is unorganised, they waste time trying to find things, they miss appointments, they only do one thing at a time when they could be doing two.

When you were born you had a clock over your head slowly ticking down until your time on Earth is over. Nobody knows when that time is up and the clock stops. Time is precious. Life is precious.

Good time management is a major building block to success. Often, it’s not how much time we spend working but how efficiently we do the work. The key to successful time management is careful planning and setting priorities.

Where do you most waste your time?

• What activities or situations are draining you and not supporting you?

• What thinking or emotions are getting you nowhere?

• Who do you continue to give to again and again while all you get back is disinterest or are taken for granted?

• Is there a job you so long to have yet you haven’t got a cat in hells chance of winning or aren’t really capable of doing?

Where are you staying when you should be going?

Plan your day, your week, and your month in advance. Know when things need to be done. A great way to ‘buy time’ is to multi-task. Do more than one thing at a time. There are many things that do not require concentrated mental effort. These are more easily combined.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

Even though I am a big soccer fan, I can’t justify sitting down and spending two hours watching a game on the television. I have to be doing other things while I do it. Thank goodness for instant replay! I’ve found this is a good time to spend icing injuries or some other busy work. I can also record the games and watch them while exercising. I exercise about 30 minutes a day so during the football season I can watch a game during the week without wasting any time doing it.

When you run errands try to do as many as you can on one trip. If you are self-employed, you can combine personal errands that are on the way to a business errand and have the mileage written off as a business expense.

I’ve been fortunate to have been able to work some of my time at home for the past ten years. It’s been good because I hate to waste time commuting. Driving in to George Town from Bodden Town and back again in ‘rush hour’ is for the birds! If you must commute, you can use the time to listen to audio self-improvement tapes, audio books or anything educational (and not the local radio talk shows).

If you are a regular exerciser and belong to a gym, think about working out at home. If you lack the space and money for exercise equipment, try traditional body weight exercises. A little research on the Internet can show you websites devoted to this subject. There are lots of body weight exercises. I’ve found they feel better and get the same if not better results. Of course, if you go to the gym to socialise or network, that’s fine. You’re doing more than one thing at a time. You can go walking with your friend/spouse or partner. That way you’re getting exercise and friend/spouse/partner interaction at the same time.

Setting priorities enables you to get the most important things done. Keep your eye on the big picture. Don’t let low priority things bump off the higher priority tasks from your schedule. If you’ve only got so much time, it’s imperative you spend your time doing the things that bring you the most benefit.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

If you want to be successful in life you need to be spending more time being productive and doing things that are moving you forward. Spending hours a day watching TV, playing computer games, or surfing the Internet is not productive time usage. We all need downtime but you need to determine how much is really necessary. If you use your productive time efficiently then you will have more time to relax and do the fun things.